Palin found not guilty by her personal Personnel Board!!!
Will wonders never cease!
(posted with tongue firmly in cheek)
Amazing what you can do in your first 20 months. So this is "executive experience":
After being found guilty of abusing her power as governor in the so-called "troopergate" scandal over the firing of her ex-brother-in-law, Palin now faces a second probe over whether she violated ethics rules in the affair.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20081023/ts_alt_afp/usvoterepublicanpalin;_ylt=AjHwJaaTvU1BFlwxM6rTMFus0NUE
The Troopergate probe was launched after a unanimous vote by 8 Republicans and 4 Democrats.
From the Associated Press October 21, 2008
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Gov. Sarah Palin, already found by one investigation to have abused her power, will take time from her campaign for vice president Friday to give a deposition in a second inquiry into her firing of the state's top public safety official.
It will be the first deposition in the affair by the Republican vice presidential candidate. She wasn't subpoenaed to answer questions in an investigation by the state Legislature, though her husband, Todd, gave an affidavit in that probe.
Read more:
Try as Palin might she cannot distance herself from the truth that she clearly abused her executive powers violated Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act ... Compliance with the code of ethics is not optional...To date she is spinning it in an effort to deceive the public into thinking that she was exonerated and cleared when in fact she was only cleared for her decision to dismiss Walt Monegan. However she faces the strong harsh cold fact that she could be impeached for violating the Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act. In fact for Alaska government not to so would be an injustice to the citizens of Alaska.When Sarah Palin stated "There was no abuse of authority at all in trying to get Officer Wooten fired," she was reciting a bald faced lie! The evidence proved without a shadow of doubt that she DID abuse her position. The report reflects this!As far as the Palin's claiming that Mr. Wooten was a threat to her family goes the concensus of the legislature was that this is untrue that in fact Palin cut back on her security after taking office which one would not do if they truly believed they were in danger.And in my not so humble opinion there are legal means and options available to handle threats that don't include the abuse of your political position. Interesting article entitled Palin Makes Troopergate Assertions that Are Flatly False by Jake Tapper - link belowhttp://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/10/palin-makes-tro.html
Please visit and support the website Women Against Sarah Palin.
http://womenagainstsarahpalin.blogspot.com/
Juli Norwood
From the Anchorage Daily News
ETHICS: Investigator hasn't said who else may be under scrutiny.
By TOM KIZZIAtkizzia@adn.com
Published: October 13th, 2008 11:50 PMLast Modified: October 13th, 2008 08:18 AM
The state Personnel Board investigation of Gov. Sarah Palin's firing of Walt Monegan has broadened to include other ethics complaints against the governor and examination of actions by other state employees, according to the independent counsel handling the case.
The investigator, Tim Petumenos, did not say who else is under scrutiny. But in two recent letters describing his inquiry, he cited the consolidation of complaints and the involvement of other officials as a reason for not going along with Palin's request to make the examination of her activities more public.
Two other ethics complaints involving Palin are known. One, by activist Andree McLeod, alleges that state hiring practices were circumvented for a Palin supporter. The case is not related to Monegan's firing. The other, by the Public Safety Employees Association, alleges that trooper Mike Wooten's personnel file was illegally breached by state officials.
John Cyr, the PSEA executive director, said Monday the union plans to amend its complaint to be sure the board investigates "harassment" of Wooten as well.
Petumenos has not spoken to the press, in keeping with the secrecy of the state process. But he gave a rough description of the investigation's course in two letters to an Anchorage attorney threatening a lawsuit over Palin's effort to waive confidentiality.
Attention is turning this week to the Personnel Board -- the state's official avenue for investigating ethics complaints -- after release of the Legislature's Troopergate investigation last Friday. The Legislature's investigator concluded that Palin was within her rights to fire Monegan as public safety commissioner, but abused her power and broke the ethics law in joining her husband to push for the firing of Wooten, who was once married to the governor's sister.
Palin reversed an earlier pledge and refused to cooperate with the Legislature's investigation, calling it politically biased. In an unusual twist, she filed the ethics complaint against herself before the board, saying she hoped to "clear the air" by an inquiry through proper channels. She asked the board to decide if she broke ethics laws or acted improperly in dismissing Monegan or in dealing with Wooten -- basically the same ground Branchflower covered.
http://www.adn.com/troopergate/story/555288.html
There are several very interesting articles on salon.com.
One of them describes in detail how Sarah Palin came to power through right wing extremists and how she still lends them an open ear even today.
Her bullying, gotcha and personal vendetta style were apparent even back in Wasilla - so no surprise about Troopergate. Check for yourselves:
The investigation initiated by the Republican majority Alaska State legislature has found Sarah Palin abused her power as governor in pushing for the firing of a state trooper. They found the public safety commissioner’s refusal to fire the trooper was a contributing factor to Palin's dismissal of the commissioner, and that Palin's husband acted inappropriately by using the governor's office to contact troopers. When he picked Palin, John McCain didn't know, didn't care, or was willing to gamble with the fate of the country. This investigation already was underway when McCain selected Palin as his running mate. The only way he could not have known about it is if he ordered no screening. He put politics before country in the hope that Palin would help his campaign. As governor, Palin did have the authority to fire the commissioner without giving a reason. Nevertheless, she broke the code of ethics, as the investigation found. The McCain/Palin campaign is claiming she didn't do this for financial gain. As with the debates, Palin may have cleared a very low bar. Perhaps McCain does not care about ethical or professional standards. He may have figured they could get away with it. After all, he himself was reprimanded by the Senate in the savings and loan scandal, a crisis involving regulation and oversight, much like the disaster of today. The impropriety of having working lobbyists within his campaign has not generated much attention. Right now, the real gamble for this country is how McCain would act as President, and how Palin would act if elected to VP. Are you willing to take that roll of the dice?
“My government is my worst enemy. I’m going to fight them with any means at hand.”
This was former revolutionary terrorist Bill Ayers back in his old Weather Underground days, right? Imagine what Sarah Palin is going to do with this incendiary quote as she tears into Barack Obama this week. Only one problem. The quote is from Joe Vogler, the raging anti-American who founded the Alaska Independence Party.
Inconveniently for Palin, that’s the very same secessionist party that her husband, Todd, belonged to for seven years and that she sent a shout-out to as Alaska governor earlier this year. (“Keep up the good work,” Palin told AIP members. “And God bless you.”)
AIP chairwoman Lynette Clark told me recently that Sarah Palin is her kind of gal. “She’s Alaskan to the bone … she sounds just like Joe Vogler.”
So who are these America-haters that the Palins are pallin’ around with? Before his strange murder in 1993, party founder Vogler preached armed insurrection against the United States of America.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/10/07/palins_unamerican/index.html
The International Herald Tribune, Americas Section
By Serge F. KovaleskiSaturday, October 11, 2008
Sarah Palin, the Republican U.S. vice-presidential candidate, abused her powers as governor of Alaska by pressuring subordinates to try to get her former brother-in-law, a state trooper, fired, according to an investigation by the Alaska Legislature released Friday.
The report concludes that the action was a violation of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act. It was not immediately clear what actions the State Legislature would take in light of the findings. Palin could be censured or the State Legislature could choose not to act at all.
The 236-page report found that Palin had exerted pressure to get State Trooper Michael Wooten dismissed and also allowed her husband and subordinates to press for Wooten's firing as a result of a messy divorce proceeding between Wooten and Palin's sister in 2005.
"Such impermissible and repeated contacts," the report states, "create conflicts of interests for subordinate employees who must choose to either please a superior or run the risk of facing that superior's displeasure and the possible consequences of that displeasure."
If you liked this message, then please have a look at the rest of my blog, http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/blog/henrymu and please consider donating to the campaign: http://my.barackobama.com/page/outreach/view/main/PListe4Obama
Henry M
Well it's official... a 263 page report states that Sarah Palin was found to guilty of abusing her executive powers which just happens to be an impeachable offense.
Note the actual report was over 1000 pages in length, the public is only being given 263 pages to view. The 263 page report can be read here. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/10/troopergate-report-full-t_n_133806.html
So what does that say about Sarah Palin... That she is no different than the corrupt, greedy, self serving political fat cats and lobbyists in Washington... you know the same ones that she and McCain claim to abhor and promise to go after with a vengeance. lol
It also shows how inept, unprofessional and amateurish the Palin administration really was. Worse yet Palin has brought total disgrace to her office and to the great state of Alaska! She breached the citizens of Alaska's faith and trust! It also speaks volumes about McCain's character and judgement... especially now that McCain continues to defend and support her. I would have had more respect for the man if he had dropped her from the ticket and admitted his error in judgement when he selected her.
The legalese is quite confusing to layman like myself. So let's try and break it down. 1st - Sarah Palin has a legal right to dismiss or fire anyone regardless of reason or for no reason at all. That is why the report states that it was a "proper and lawful exercise of her constitutional and statutory authority" The firing of Walt Monegan is a non issue! McCain camp claims this vindicates her altogether... WRONG!
2ndly - she WAS found to have violated Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act" and this is a HUGE ISSUE! Alaska's ethics law states the following:The legislature reaffirms that each public officer holds office as a public trust, and any effort to benefit a personal or financial interest through official action is a violation of that trust.
A list of 18 inappropriate behaviors commited by Sarah and Todd Palin suggests that Governor. Palin "knowingly" engaged in improper behavior with regard to Trooper Wooten and therefore she abused her power as Governor and had violated state ethics laws and abused her power by trying to have her former brother-in-law fired as a state trooper.
The report states that Sarah Palin improperly pressed for the firing of Trooper Wooten, however it was her husband Todd who had been responsible for the majority of inappropriate behaviors in the report... Sarah Palin is guilty of knowingly permitting Todd Palin to pursue a personal vendetta and allowing him to use the Governor's office and all of the resources of the Governor's office, including access to state employees, to continue to contact subordinate state employees in an effort to get Trooper Wooten fired.
The McCain Spin Doctors claim that this was a politically motivated investigation.
FACT: The majority of the Alaskan Legislature is Republican. The investigation was initiated by the Republicans and the investigation was initiated well before McCain selected her as his running mate. 10 Republicans and only 4 democrats were part of the investigative panel.
Under Alaska law it is up to the state's Personnel Board, not the Legislature, to decide whether Palin violated the ethics laws. Palin recently said that the Personnel Board inquiry is the only one that matters. And McCain's campaign echoed those same comments on Friday.The problem with this is that the Personnel Board is made up of individuals who Sarah Palin personally appointed to the board. This is a terrible conflict of interest and any investigation by the Personnel Board could never be taken seriously.
Obviously Palin would prefer to be investigated by her friends. ;-)
Whether justice is served or not in this case the damage to her credibility is insurmountable.
Shout out to John McCain and Sarah Palin... Perhaps you should reform yourselves first before you attempt to reform others. ;-)
Let me repeat Sarah Palin was found guilty of Abusing her Executive Powers! An Impeachable Offense! Let's respect McCain and Palin's reform policy by not voting for them until they reform. lol
NY Times Article:
Gov. Sarah Palin abused the powers of her office by pressuring subordinates to try to get her former brother-in-law, a state trooper, fired, an investigation by the Alaska Legislature has concluded. The inquiry found, however, that she was within her right to dismiss her public safety commissioner, Walt Monegan, who was the trooper’s boss.
In the tradition of the Karl Rove Friday Evening News Dump, Palin's office released the deposition of the state employees interviewed in the State report on Troopergrate tonight:
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/10/10/alaska-governors-office-responds-to-troopergate-report/
I guess Palin is very much like Bush/Cheney in their abuse of Executive power!
Dave
a bipartisan legislative investigation in alaska today concluded that sarah palin "unlawfully abused her authority in firing the state's public safety commissioner."
after all that's happened in the political landscape this week, especially all the accusations made by palin herself about obama, her credibility is now officially toast. this is a blatant ethics law violation, and consisted of not 1 or 2, but 19 separate phone calls by both palin and her husband trying to get his ex-brother-in-law fired.
apparently, a maverick is someone who roams the countryside spreading hatred and racism after abusing power and public office for their own personal gain, at least if you use her own quotes against her. of course, now she'll blame political partisanship for this report - even though the investigation was launched before she was even tapped to be the VP nominee - because that's just what a maverick does!
did i mention already how she does not deserve to be anywhere near the white house? i think i did, but i'm not sure...
-h
Members of the bipartisan Alaska Legislative Council have voted 12-0 with 2 absent to release investigator Steve Branchflower's "Troopergate" report submitted Friday, concluding that Governor Sarah Palin unlawfully abused her power in pushing for the firing of an Alaska state trooper who was once married to her sister.
The report found that Palin violated the state's executive branch ethics act, which says that "each public officer holds office as a public trust, and any effort to benefit a personal or financial interest through official action is a violation of that trust." The report also found that state public safety commissioner Walt Monegan's dismissal by Palin was attributable at least in part to Monegan's refusal to fire Palin's former brother-in-law, Mike Wooten, from the Alaska state police. The report states that "Governor Palin knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda ... to get Trooper Michael Wooten fired." In addition, Branchflower determined that Sarah and Todd Palins' claims of fear of Wooten "were not bona fide and were offered to provide cover for the Palins' real motivation: to get Trooper Wooten fired for personal family related reasons." Finally, Branchflower's report states that the office of Palin's attorney general has failed to comply with an August 6 written request from Branchflower for information about the case in the form of e-mails. The full report is available at the Anchorage Daily News (see also Mudflats).
The McCain/Palin campaign has attempted by all means at its disposal to prevent the release of Branchflower's report, including a failed appeal to the Alaska Supreme Court. The campaign also tried to preempt the Alaska Legislative Council's finding by issuing its own report, which of course found Palin wholly innocent of any wrongdoing in the Troopergate affair.
The release of Branchflower's report follows close on the heels of news earlier Friday that a superior court judge in Anchorage had ordered the state of Alaska to preserve any government-related e-mails sent by Palin from private accounts. This ruling came as the result of a lawsuit against Palin by Anchorage resident Andree McLeod. "We shouldn't be in a position where public records have been lost because the governor didn't do what every other state employee knows to do, which is to use an official, secure state e-mail account to conduct state business...," McLeod told the Associated Press following the ruling, "...It's a dereliction of the governor and her duties."
I look forward to watching the fallout from this report and its effects on the McCain/Palin campaign in the coming days.
The Alaskan legislature has spoken and the bipartisan commission (download the 263 page report) finds that Gov. Sarah Palin abuse of power was contributory to the firing of the Alaskan public safety commissioner. She apparently did not break the law since the person fired served at the will of the Governor and the firing procedure, as dictated by Alaska law, was properly followed. However, according to the report, she did break the public trust, especially in allowing her husband to interfere so much in state affairs regarding the issue.Quite something coming from a person who has been painting Sen. Obama as untrustworthy, and the campaign that has co-opted the reform mantra. Sounds like politics of old to this writer. McCain-Palin already have a scandal andwe haven't even reached Nov 4th. Can you spell Bush?
Going forward the McCain camp should have a more difficult time equating Obama’s association with Bill Ayers, the distinguished professor of education at the University of Illinois as having anything to do with terrorism. Obama first served with Ayers on the board of an educational non-profit in 1995. As is well known, Ayers was a domestic terrorist in the 1960s and 70s. At the time that Ayers was involved with the Weather Underground Sen. Obama was 8 years old. Enough said.Not only have the recent economic events put Reaganomics out of business, but hopefully Obama will get elected and dismantle Atwater-Rove style politics.
This report could be another nail in the politics of hate and division.
The past few months have been really stressy for me. How about you? Yeah, I haven't talked to anyone in a good long while that's sleeping well or feeling particularly up. When you're actually in kind of a personal rut, like I am at the moment, it's really inconvenient to have the entire world tank at the same time.
First of all, there was Hurricane Ike. Remember? The one that hit the Texas coast? Nobody ever really talked about it, although I'm having a hell of a time figuring out why. Turns out, about 300 people died in the Galveston area in the storm. I honestly don't have the intestinal fortitude to rehash, again, why this is something you should care about. As I finally had to say to a particularly nasty comments troll on dailykos: if you don't know, I can't tell you. What is worth thinking about, though, is this: how is it that 300 people can die and you don't hear a peep about it on the national news channels? Give it some thought.
Next up for the apocalypse, the destruction of our national economy by approximately 100 jerks. How do I know it's probably all about 100 jerks? Because one of them used to be my jerk and I talked to him about his job a lot. What he did was credit default swap trading for Lehman Brothers, from 2001 to, oh, hey! a couple of weeks ago. Sound familiar? That's because you will find all of those same words in stories far and wide under titles such as "How Did This Happen?" and "Whose Fault Is It?" Answer: those jerks. Not the answer: people who tried to buy houses.
I swear if I hear one more politician boil it down to the responsibility of people who just should never be allowed to buy houses in the first place---Barack, McCain, whoever---I'm going to blow my top. I know Barack has to say whatever he needs to say to get to Nov. 4 now. I'm with him all the way. But it does make me ill to hear him talk about how people were irresponsible without talking about the percentage of foreclosures that were precipitated by the inability to go bankrupt because of medical bills that were impossible to pay. There is a significant portion of these people who faced that---as my family did when I was growing up. Twice. Only then there was not a draconian bankruptcy law in place. (Thank you, Joe Biden!)
Nor do these political hopefuls tend to mention the vicious and deliberately hidden terms embedded in these mortgages that made them, literally, impossible to pay back. Think about your friend that bought a house this year or last year. I'm sure you have one because everyone was buying friggin' houses in the past few years, weren't they? Now think about how smart that person is. Maybe really smart, maybe not. Either way----how much do they know about mortgage laws? How much time do they have to read the paperwork that goes along with their mortgage? Have you ever sat through a mortgage signing? It is like 10,000 pages of paperwork that you have an hour to sign. There's hardly even an expectation that you'll read it. It is completely absurd to lay the blame at the feet of average people trying to buy houses.
Anyway, back to the real culprits. Here's the long and the short of it: there were $62 trillion in credit default swaps on the market before the collapse. $62 trillion. You're going to try to tell me this is about Joe 6 pack and his mortgage? Please.
“The really interesting question that no one knows the answer to is, if you were to go into liquidation and sell off all the derivatives contracts, what is the value?” he told the newspaper. “We are just learning that no one, not even the senior people within these banks, knows how much these contracts are worth.” -- American Bar Association Journal
All right. What are credit default swaps? Well, when a trader loves his money very very much, he lays down with it side by side to give it a very special kiss...and 9 months later the economy collapses!
A lot of explantions of credit default swaps will tell you that they are a form of insurance. Okay. That's one way of thinking about it. But, they are "insurance" in the same way that the money you pay to Lefty and Rocko every other Wednesday is "protection." Let's just call this whole thing what it is: gambling.
"There is at least one key difference between casino gambling and CDS trading: Gambling has strict government regulation." -- Fortune
(Phew. I thought they were going to say lipstick.)
I'm just going to boil it down for you the same way My Jerk boiled it down for me about 5 years ago:
Let's say someone on your street opens up a lemonade stand. Then, his two neighbors bet one another on how much he'll make at the lemonade stand. Then, a guy down the street makes a bet on their bet, as to which of them will be right. A couple of streets over, the same thing is going on. The two third-party guys on both streets call each other up and decide to swap their bets. That is a credit default swap.
Does it sound crooked? Does it sound risky? That's because it is. Maybe, I think it's safe to say now, a little too risky.
Meanwhile, in the world of finding reasons to continue drawing breath, there is us winning everything all the time. Oh, and this rad thought:
"Palin's as off-putting and gross as a pageant contestant, but without the desire for world peace." -- Sarah Silverman
So, of course she is guilty as sin on Troopergate. Duh. The report is out today. And, of course, she issued a statement hours prior to the release of the Troopergate investigation report absolving herself of any wrongdoing. (Wait, did I miss something? Is she is a priest now? Was that part of that contract she signed in blood?)
What else has she been lying about lately? Well, you can't see Russia from her house, to start with. But, really, who can tell when she's lying and when she's not, if her sentences are so incomprehensible that they cannot be understood even by experts? Now that's what I call plausible deniability!
For those who think I'm being too hard on her, take heart. I'm sure she could give a damn what I think of her. (Oh, by the way, you too.) In fact, it turns out she's unpopular right the world round, as the Brit's say.
"What is most striking about her is that she seems perfectly untroubled by either curiosity or the usual processes of thought. When answering questions, both Obama and Joe Biden have an unfortunate tendency to think on their feet and thereby tie themselves in knots: Palin never thinks. Instead, she relies on a limited stock of facts, bright generalities and pokerwork maxims, all as familiar and well-worn as old pennies. Given any question, she reaches into her bag for the readymade sentence that sounds most nearly proximate to an answer, and, rather than speaking it, recites it, in the upsy-downsy voice of a middle-schooler pronouncing the letters of a word in a spelling bee." -- Jonathan Raban
And speaking of just talking without thinking, thereby, perhaps, emitting the shite: McCain has a tell. Which is kind of funny, actually, because there are these pols in Indiana who want to debate while strapped into polygraph machines, like that stupid television show. Still, perhaps this is what we need at this point of the apocalypse.
What's another great reason for loathing McCain this week. How about this?
Tune in for Part II of "So, You're Living During the End Times" later this afternoon........
http://www.adn.com/troopergate/
This link with take you the the Anchorage Daily News Coverage of "Troopergate", the investigation into whether or not Gov. Palin abused her powers when she fired Walt Monegan, Public Safety Commissioner in Alaska.
Many Alaskans weren't that concerned about the investigation. It seemed odd that Monegan was fired seemingly out of the blue, but Governors make changes to staff, especially those appointed by a predecessor. There was a huge outcry in support of Monegan seemed to fade away - especially when his replacement appointed by Palin had to resign after two weeks because of sexual harassment charges filed against him while Chief of Police in Kenai, AK. Talk shifted from Monegan to questions about how could Palin's staff have missed such a glaring red flag. People I talked to thought that it was inappropriate of Palin to use her position to carry on a family feud but there didn't seem to be clear consensus about whether or not she had abused her power. The investigation undertaken by the legislature seemed like a good idea. Palin promised transparency, here you go.
Following the surprise announcement of Palin as McCain's running mate, Troopergate went from a bipartisan investigation with Palin promising to cooperate, into an all out attempt on the part of Alaska Republican Legislators, the Alaska Attorney General (who also serves as Gov. Palin's pleasure) and the McCain campaign to stone wall, if not block it entirely.
This about face on Palin's part and lack of cooperation by the Alaska Attorney General is a clear indication of what happens when an unknown Governor hits the big leagues and has to play ball with the big boys. I am incredulous whenever I hear her portray herself as one of the everyday, ordinary Americans with so much at stake in this election. She certainly has a lot at stake but it's her own political career. When she and McCain are defeated and she has to come home and go back to being a Govenor from a small state, I think people here will remember the stretched truths and misrepresentations of what has happened during her tenure.
We should know more in the next two days about troopergate. In the big picture, maybe it doesn't really matter if a VP candidate has this type of problem. But it is clearly within the big picture that Palin and McCain have tried to derail the investigation making her admiration of VP Cheney even more of a concern. That McCain has allowed this to happen shows that he is after all one of Washington's establishment and certainly no maverick, and is further evidence of his eratic, unpredicatble behaviour by choosing Palin as a running mate in the first place.
FRIDAY REPORT: Nearly everyone investigator had hoped to question, minus governor, will be on record.
By WESLEY LOYwloy@adn.com
Published: October 8th, 2008 12:41 AMLast Modified: October 8th, 2008 12:50 AM
With his Troopergate report due Friday, legislative investigator Steve Branchflower appears to have the makings of a fairly complete account, despite weeks of resistance from the Palin family and administration.
Branchflower has, or soon will have, answers from nearly all the people he'd hoped to question regarding Gov. Sarah Palin's firing in July of former Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan.
Some of the final witnesses include seven state employees, including the governor's chief of staff, who lost a court fight to kill subpoenas Branchflower obtained through the Alaska Senate Judiciary Committee to compel their testimony.
The seven this week are answering a list of questions known as interrogatories. The answers are submitted under oath.
http://www.adn.com/troopergate/story/549113.html
